The company behind Broadband in Gas (BIG) technology, Nethercom, last year threw out some gaudy prediction numbers for their ultra-wideband wireless broadband service - which they say can deliver 40-100Mbps through your gas pipes to your PC. Nethercomm claims they can deliver this speed for roughly the same price as a DSL install, or a tenth the install price of a fiber line.

To support their own marketing, Nethercomm cuddled up to a research report from "West Technology Research Solutions" (WTRS), which claimed that BIG service "may soon be provided to" 70% of the US population. Of course that's the number of potential customers served by gas lines, not any solid prediction of technology deployment.

The study predicted BIG "stands to add nearly 20 million subscribers to the overall market by 2010, as compared to an overall subscriber forecast of 455 million subscribers globally." The biggest perk, they claim, being that gas-pipes "exhibit very low noise floors, and are generally devoid of outside signal interference".

Last September, Nethercomm gathered 40+ utilities in San Diego to sell them on the technology. As far as we've heard, none of those companies has seriously pursued the technology. Many of those same companies are passing on broadband over powerline (BPL) technology, unconvinced of the ROI of getting into the residential broadband business.

But it still makes a good story; however USAToday skips much of the exposition while profiling the technology this morning. Nethercomm CEO Patrick Nunally tells the paper the potential exists for the technology to provide 6 gigabits per second worth of bandwidth per household.

"It's been a Coke and Pepsi (battle) between cable and phone companies," Nunally tells the paper. "We're in a position to come in and provide real competition."